The Agrarian Debates in the Third Duma

Published:Proletary, No. 40, December 1 (14). 190S Signed:N. L..

      Published according to the text inProletary.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1973,

      Moscow,Volume 15,

      pages303-318.Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Nearlya month of agrarian debates in the Third Duma has
provided exceptionally valuable material for the study of the present state
of the agrarian question, the lessons of the revolution and the tasks of
the proletariat. We shall try and draw the main conclusions from this
material. The speakers fall of themselves into four groups—the Rights,
the Cadets, the peasants and the Social-Democrats. The differences between
the “Right” in the narrow sense of the word and the Octobrists completely
fade out. The peas ants unquestionably act as a single political tendency
on the agrarian question, the difference between the Right-wing peasants
and the Trudoviks being only a distinction of shadings within a single
tendency. Let us analyse the position which each of these groups took
up. (The figures in brackets refer to the pages of the verbatim reports in
the supplement toRossiya.)

Ascould have been expected of Black-Hundred “parliamentarians”, the
Rights and the Octobrists tried to cover up the substance of their agrarian
policy with the litter of juridical casuistry and archive rubbish, holding
forth on the relations between the law of November 9, 1906, and Article 12
of the General Statute on the Peasantry (granting the peasants, after
redemption, the right to demand a separate piece of land as their private
property), then on Article 165 of the Statute of Land Purchase, etc. Posing
as a “liberal”, Shidlovsky tried to prove that the legislation of Count
D. Tolstoy on inalienability of allotments, etc., contradicted the
“spirit” of 1861, whereas the law of November 9, 1906, corresponded to
that spirit. All thiswas sheer humbug, calculated to throw dust into the eyes of the peasantry
and obscure the real issue. To a consider able extent the Cadets, as we
shall see later, rose to the bait of the Black Hundreds; but for us
socialists it is sufficient to point out in a few words what a thick layer
of bureaucratic dust must be brushed off the speeches of the Shidlovskys,
the Lykoshins and other lackeys of the Black Hundred tsarist gang to see
the real content of their agrarian policy. Mr. Lvov the First, who, we
believe, calls himself a Peaceful Renovator, but who in fact is a real
Black Hundreder with the manners and graces of a Mr. Struve, expressed this
content more clearly than others. “Among the peasantry,” said this
servant of the landlords, “two elements have emerged: the helpless
individual and the lawless mob (applause from the Right and the
Centre)....Such a condition of the masses is a menace to the lawful
[meaning, landlords’ I state (applause from the Right and the
Centre)....The land must belong to all who toil, the land like the
air and water; we have come here to get land and freedom.” This was the
dominating voice. And this voice, snatched directly from those
superstitions and prejudices which are rooted in the peasant mass, this
voice pointed out to us that superstitious conception of authority which
can take from some and give to others.... “Let us recall what was said in
this building [continued Mr. Lvov remembering previous Dumas]. It is
painful for me to recall this, but I will say, I cannot but say, what was
discussed in the agrarian commission. Yes, when even the question of
leaving at least vegetable allotments or orchards inviolate met with the
strongest opposition, met the most violent resistance, and was carried only
by the smallest majority; when it was suggested that all land transactions
should be stopped, not only mortgages in the Bank of the Nobility, not only
sales to the Peasant Bank, but buying and selling land itself, even gifts
and inheritance of land—then obviously one trembled, gentlemen, trembled
not for the interests of the landlord, but trembled for the condition and
the destiny of the state (applause of the Centre and the
Right. Exclamation: “Bravo!”).On such a Foundation it is impossible
to build a capitalist, a modern state” (293).

Thelandlord state “trembled” for its existence, “trembled” at the
“voice” (and movement) of the peasant masses. These gentlemen cannot even
imagine any capitalism that is not based on the preservation of
landlordism, i. e., feudalist landownership. The “educated” Lvovs have
not even heard that capitalism develops most widely, freely and rapidly
when all private property in land is completely abolished!

Foragitation among the masses, the study of extracts from the speeches
of Shidlovsky, Bobrinsky, Lvov, Golitsyn, Kapustin and Co. is absolutely
necessary. Up till now we have seen the autocracy almost exclusively when
it was giving orders, and sometimes, rarely, publishing statements in the
spirit of

Ugryum-Burcheyev.[2]Now we have the open defence of the landlord
monarchy and the Black-Hundred “constitution” by the organised
representatives of the ruling classes, and this defence provides very
valuable material for the awakening of those sections of the people who are
politically unconscious or indifferent. Let us briefly note two
particularly important circumstances. In the first place, when setting out
their political programme, the Right constantly bring forward to their
audience the living enemy against whom they are fighting. This enemy is the
revolution. “Fear” of the revolution, which was so clearly expressed by
the stupid Lvov, is no less clearly manifest inallwho at every
step recall the recent past with hatred, anger, and grinding of teeth. This
direct posing ofallquestions on the basis ofcounter-revolution, this subordination ofallarguments
to one principal and root argument, the struggle against revolution,
contains within itself a profound truth. And it makes the speeches of the
Right incomparably more valuable material, both for the scientific analysis
of the present situation and for purposes of agitation, than the speeches
of the half-hearted and cowardly liberals. The unrestrained fury with which
the Right attack the revolution, the end of 1905, the risings, the first
two Dumas, shows better than any long speeches that the protectors of the
autocracy see before them alivingenemy, that they do not
consider the struggle with the revolution ended, that the revival of the
revolution looms before them every minute as a very real and immediatethreat. You don’t fight a dead enemy in this way. You don’t hate a dead
enemy like this. The simple-minded Mr. Balakleyev naively expressed this
common spirit of all the speeches of the Right. Saying that of course the
ukase of November 9 could not be rejected, since it expressed the royal
will, he declared at the same time: “Gentlemen of the Imperial Duma! We
are living at a time of revolution which, in my profound conviction, has
far from ended yet” (364). Mr. Balakleyev fears the “revolutionary
origin” of the law of November 9; he is afraid it may inflame a new
struggle. “We are going through a painful crisis,” he said, “and how it
will end no one knows. Imagination draws the most sombre pictures, but our
duty is not to support sedition and discord among the people."

Thesecond, very important, circumstance refers to the economic, and
particularly the agrarian, programme of the Right. This is their defence of
the private property in land of thepeasants, a defence which is
the keynote of all their speeches, including that of the arch-priest
Mitrofanushka (Bishop Mitrofan), who spoke immediately after the reporter,
evidently seeking to frighten the democratic but downtrodden village
priests. Comically trying to over come in himself the habit of playing the
religious simpleton and of using the language of the seminary (“the
village commune is a primordial phenomenon”), he mouthed such phrases as
“Life develops in the direction of a greater and greater individuality of
personality”; “We must recognise as useful the new pattern of life among
our peasants on the model of the West-European farmers” (69).

Itmay be asked, why do the class of landlords and the class of
capitalists so energetically defend, both in the Second and in the Third
Dumas, the private property in land of thepeasants? Only because
such is the “latest government instruction"? Of course not. This
instruction it self has been suggested and prompted by the Council of the
United

Nobility.[3]The landlords and capitalists know perfectly well what
enemy they have to fight, they realise only too well that therevolution has bound upthe victory of the landlords’ interests
with the victory of private property in land in general; the victory of
peasant interests with the abolition of private property in land ingeneral, both landlords’ and peasants’ property. The combination of private
property in the allotment lands with social property in the expropriated
landlords’ estates is a poor invention of the Cadets and the
Mensheviks.In realitythe struggle is whether the landlords will
be the builders of the new Russia (this is impossible, except on the basis
of private property in land of all kinds), or whether it will be the
peasant masses (this is impossible in a semi-feudal country without
destroying private propertyboth inlandlords’ andinallotment lands).

Letus go on to the Cadets. Their speeches are distinguished from those
of the Right and those of the Left by a striving to reconcile the
irreconcilable, to straddle two stools. Only in that part of Mr. Milyukov’s
speech in which he spoke as ahistorian, and not as aCadet, have we a splendid selection of facts on the history of the
Council of the United Nobility—a summary which does credit to anydemocrat. But on the whole Shingaryov, Berezovsky, Milyukov,
Bobyansky and Rodichev swallowed the bait. of the Black-Hundred
Mr. Shidlovsky, and with enormous zeal stuffed the heads of their audience
with juridical casuistry, poured out phrases about “justice” according to
Roman law (“for greater show” Rodichev, even inserted the Latin wordaequitas! “We”did learn something in the university
after all!), sank to contemptible boot-licking (Mr. Shingaryov certified
his “respect” for Stolypin’s lackey Lykoshin, and tried to prove that
compulsory alienation of land was practised in countries where “the
institution of private property is most sacredly observed”). All the Cadet
speeches objecting to the law of November 9 struck a note of
“caution”. We Bolsheviks were accused of denigrating the Cadets by
calling them liberal landlords. As a matter of fact, they are worse. They
are liberalplacemen. One can not imagine a greater corruption of
thedemocraticconscience of the masses than this pronouncing in
the Duma, by the party of so-called “democrats”, of speeches whichblunt the edgeof the struggle, which preach the “caution” of
bureaucrats, which basely praise that plundering and enslavement of the
peasants by the feudalist landlords known as “the Great Reform” of 1861!

Toattack Stolypin for the “indiscreetness” of his agrarianpolicy means to become a prostitute, to offer oneself for the post ofsuchinstruments of this policy as would be able to dothe
very same job“discreetly”, i. e., carry out that same landlords’
policy under the false flag of “constitutional democracy”, carry it out
not by force alone but also by deceiving the peasants. Here is one of the
numerous Cadet statements which reveal precisely this sense of what they
were saying. Mr. Berezovsky, whose speech was highly approved by the Cadet
leader Mr. Milyukov (he called it “excellent”), declared:

“Iam profoundly convinced that this Bill [the Cadet Land Bill] is
far more advantageous for the landowners as well [not only for the
peasants]: and I say this, gentlemen, knowing agriculture, engaged in it
all my life and owning land myself. For cultured farming the Bill of the
party of people’s freedom would undoubtedly be more useful than the present
system. One should not seize on the bare fact of compulsory alienation, get
bitter about it, and call it an act of violence; one should look at what is
proposed in our Bill, assess what it amounts to, and consider how this
compulsory alienation is to be carried out [golden words,
Mr. Berezovsky. Can you have become a Bolshevik?]. Take the Bill of the 42
members of the First Duma; it contained only [that’s just it!] recognition
that it was necessary in the first instance to subject to compulsory
alienation those lands which were not being exploited by the owners them
selves. Then the party of people’s freedom supported the formation of local
committees, which at a given time were to ascertain what lands should be
subject to compulsory alienation, what should not be subject to it, and how
much land the peasants needed to be satisfied. These committees were
composed in such a way that half the members should be peasants and half
non-peasants. [Speak out, Mr. Berezovsky, don’t be ashamed! The truth can’t
be hidden anyhow: thanks to the obligatory appointment of a “neutral”
chairman by the landlords’ government, the landlords would always have a
safe majority in the committees over the peasants—see Kutler’s draft in
Volume II of the CadetAgrarian Question. I In view of this, the
general concrete work in the localities, would of course have made it clear
how much land was available for compulsoryalienation, how much land the peasants needed and, finally, the peasants
themselves would see how far their just demands could be satisfied. Then
all this would go through the Duma and the Council of State [just so! I and
after being dealt with by them [i.e., after a second whittling-down of the
“reform” by the new landlord-bureaucrat majority!] would pass up for the
royal sanction [recall the consistent reduction of the size of allotments
by similar high authorities in 18611. The result of this systematic work
would undoubtedly have been the genuine satisfaction of the real needs of
the population and, linked with this, pacification and preservation of
cultured estates, which the party of people’s freedom never wished to
destroy, except in case of extreme necessity” (143).

Mr.Berezovsky in October 1908 admittedeverythingthe
Bolsheviks had said in the summer of 1906 about the Cadets’ Land Bill! In
the First Duma the Cadets were publicly advertising the democratic exterior
of their reform, while proving in private conversations with Trepov and his
hangers-on its favourable character for the landlords. In the Third Duma
the Cadets publicly advertise the landlord character of their reform, while
demonstrating its democratic character in conversations held secretly from
the police with those few simpletons who can still listen to grandmother’s
tales. The two-faced Janus turns his “faces” now one way, now another,
according to the direction from which the wind blows. The “democrats”
fall so low that they try to prove to the Black-Hundred diehards how
inoffensive their actions and programmes are at a time of revolution!

Comparewith this the speeches of the peasants. Take a typical
Right-wing peasant, Storchak. He begins his speech by repeating in full the
words of Nicholas II about “the sacred rights of property”, the
impermissibility of their “infringement”, etc. He continues: “May God
grant the Emperor health. He spoke well for the whole people” (295). And
he finishes: “But if His Majesty said that there should be justice and
order, then, of course, if I am sitting on 3 dessiatines of land, and next
to me there are 30,000 dessiatines, that is not order and justice” (296)!
Compare this monarchist with the monarchist Berezovsky. One isan ignorant peasant, the other an educated almost-European. The first is as
innocent as a babe unborn and amazingly ignorant politically. The link
between the monarchy and “order”, i. e., the disorder and injustice which
protect the owners of 30,000 dessiatines, is not clear to him. The second
is a skilled politician who knows all the ins and outs to Witte, Trepov,
Stolypin and Co., and who has studied the niceties of European
constitutions. The first is one of those millions who toil and moil all
their life on 3 dessiatines, and whom economic realitiesdriveinto mass revolutionary struggle against the holders of 30,000
dessiatines. The second is one of the tens of thousands or at most one
hundred thousand landlords who wants “peacefully” to keep his “cultured
estate” by throwing a sop to the peasant. Is it not clear that the firstcanmake a bourgeois revolution in Russia,abolishlandlordism and set up a peasant republic (however much this word may
frighten him now)? Is it not clear that the secondcannot buthinder the struggle of the masses without which the victory of the
revolution is impossible?

Thosepeople who still cannot for the life of them understand what
“the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the
peasantry” means, should give some thought to this!

Storchak’sagrarian programme is that same Land Bill of the 42 peasant
deputies in the Third Duma about which we wrote inProletary,[1]No. 22. Outwardly very modest, this Bill ismore Leftthan the
Cadet Bill, as the Cadets themselves admit. By demanding discussion of the
reform under which the peasantry is to have land allotted to it by local
committees elected by a democratic vote, this Billin effectis a
revolutionary document—since the discussion of land reform in the local
areas by genuinely democratic elected institutions is absolutely
incompatible with the maintenance in present-day Russia of the rule of the
tsar and of landlordism. And the fact that, in a Black- Hundred Duma
elected on the basis of an electoral law manipulated in favour of the
landlords on the instructions of the united nobility, and at a time when
the most violentreaction and unbridled White Terror are rampant,42 peasantsput
their signatures to such a Bill in such a Duma demonstrates the
revolutionary state of mind of the peasant mass in Russia of today better
than any argument. Let the opportunists strive to prove the necessity of an
alliance with the Cadets, the necessity of the proletariat coming closer
together with the bourgeoisie in the bourgeois revolution:

class-conscious workers will only be strengthened in their conviction,
after reading the debates in the Third Duma, that a victorious bourgeois
revolution in Russia is impossible without a joint onset by the worker and
peasant masses, in spite of the waverings and betrayals of the bourgeoisie.

IfStorchak, and the deputies who at bottom share his views—the
priest Titov, Andreichuk, Popov IV and Nikityuk—express the revolutionary
temper of the peasant mass unconsciously, spontaneously, afraid themselves
not only to speak out, but even to think out what their words and proposals
imply, the Trudoviks in the Third Duma express the spirit of the peasants’
mass struggle outspokenly. Most valuable in this respect are the speeches
of the Trudovik peasants, who state their views forthrightly, conveying the
moods and aspirations of the masses with amazing precision and liveliness,
mixing up programmes (some speak of their sympathy with the Bill of the 42
peasants, others of sympathy with the Cadets), but all the more strongly
expressing what lies deeper than any programmes.

TakeKropotov, deputy from Vyatka Gubernia. “My electors told me that
the law of November 9 is a landlords’ law.... My electors put questions
like this: Why is this being done by force?.., Why are our lands handed
over to the rural

superintendents[4]?... The electors mandated me to say: You tell them
in the Duma that we can’t go on living like this.... And as soon as they
start applying it [the law of November 9] in our district the new
landlords, as our peasants call them, find their houses on fire”
(71).... “All they care about is to reward the landlords..., Why is it in
the public interest to take the last piece away from the poor man and give
it to those who, as I put it, managed just by chance, under the law written
by the government, to keep their land? Isn’t it in the public interest that
people should be forced to cultivate land that is lying idle—thelandlords’ land, state, crown and monastery lands?... 11 rubles 50 kopeks
per dessiatine comes in from the peasant, and if, gentlemen, we were fair
and imposed this tax equally on all, the land would really prove to be in
t.he hands of the peasants, and no compulsory alienation would be
needed. To be fair, there should be a single tax on the land, and then it
will be in the hands of the working masses, and then no one will be
envious: whoever doesn’t want to work, won’t pay” (73)....

Whatstrength as yet untried in struggle, what a striving towards
struggle is contained in this naive speech! To avoid “compulsory
alienation”, Kropotovin effectproposes a measure which is
tantamount toconfiscationof the landed estates and
nationalisation ofallthe land! That the “single tax” which
this adherent of Henry

George[5]proposes is tantamount to
nationalisation of all the land, Kropotov does not realise; but that he is
expressing the true aspirations ofmillions—of this there can be
no shadow of doubt.

Takedeputy Rozhkov, who begins by saying: “It is difficult for me, a
village muzhik, gentlemen, to speak from this rostrum” (77). “The
peasants expected from the Duma not the law of November 9, not a law which
divides amongst us land we haven’t got, but a law under which first our
plots of land would have increased, and then division would have begun. The
main principles of such a law were submitted on February 20, signed by 47
peasants, but up till now nothing has been done about it.... The rural
superintendents are bosses of the land ... but the real masters of that
land are tied down by a reinforced state of security.... We have no
definite law in the country for purchase of land in order to make use of it
... which would say: don’t buy it for use And lo and behold, on September
16, 1907, the Stavropol land committee decided that land could be bought
only by a man possessing draught animals and agricultural implements. And
here, gentlemen, in this very building, nearly half are landlords holding
in bondage these men whom the land committee won’t allow to buy
land. Gentlemen, We know that these people are working for 60-70 rubles a
year.... This poor toiler is doomed for ever to be a worker for the
landlord, an eternal drudge for otherpeople, while behind his back his master will consider himself a cultured
person."

Tomilov:“The only way out ... in our opinion, is this:

the land should be redistributed at once, in all the village communes of
Russia, on the basis of a census similar to those previously carried out;
this census should establish the number of male persons as on November 3,
1905.

"Thefond dream of the peasant is to get land and freedom, but we
have heard that so long as.the present government is in power, landed
property is inviolable. (Voices in the Centre: “Private
property.") Yes, private, noblemen’s property. (Voices in the
Centre: “And yours too.") As far as we are concerned, we are prepared
to give up our allotments [there it is,. the peasantVendée, with which the so wise Plekhanov and Co. were
frightening us at Stockholm, in the event that all the land was

nationalised[6]!]. I will say that the peasants in any village are
willing to give up their allotments, unit for unit, and to become
equal. The statement of the representative of the Ministry amounts to this,
that so long as power has not passed into the hands of the peasantry and
the people generally, the peasants will not see either the land or
political liberties. Thank you for your frankness, though we knew it
already” (149)....

"Andin 1905, when, under the leadership of the conscious
elements, the peasants united together (noise and laughter on the
Right) and said their grim.word ... then the nobility began to say:
‘Why, you’ve got land, you’ve got your allotments. Go and divide up that
little bone...’."

PetrovIII: “Remember, gentlemen, the times of the reign of Alexei
Mikhailovich, and the protest of the peasant people which expressed itself
in the movement under the leadership of

Razin[7](voices on the Right: “Oho!”).... The people most
strongly expressed its demands in 1905. Then, too, poverty made the people
come out into the streets and say their imperious say about what they
needed” (187).... “All the land must pass into equalised tenure of all
the people.... I am of course an opponent of private property in land [the
Vendée predicted by Plekhanov positively begins to extend!] and I
say that the working people will not get an easier time until all the land
passes into their hands” (204).... “I am absolutely convinced you will
see once againthe depths of the sea of life disturbed. And then the saying of the
Testament will come true: he who lifts the sword shall perish by the sword
(laughter on the Right).The Trudovik group has not changed its
ideals and has not changed its aspirations.... We ... say: all the land to
those who work on it, and all power to the working people!” (206).

Merzlyakov:“The land must belong to those who till it.... Only there
mustn’t be any land racket in Russia, and the land should belong to those
who till it by their own labour” (207). And so on.

Lackof space obliges us to quote no more. We shall mention only the
names of the speakers who expressed the same ideas less clearly and
strongly: Kondratyev, the priest Popov II, Bulat, Volkov II,
Dzióbiński, Lachnicki (the last two making official
statements on behalf of the Trudovik group).

Whatconclusions in relation to the agrarian programme of
Social-Democracy follow from this attitude of the peasant deputies? All are
agreed that the peasants invest the struggle against the feudal latifundia
and all the survivals of serfdom with the utopias of petty-bourgeois
socialism. This is expressed in the concluding section of our agrarian
programme which was drafted by the Bolsheviks and accepted at Stockholm by
the Mensheviks (Minutes of the Stockholm Congress).

Butthe question does not end there. Division of the land,
municipalisation, nationalisation are all bourgeois- democratic reforms;
but what system should the Social- Democrats support? Municipalisation,
answer the Mensheviks headed by Plekhanov, since they got this programme
adopted at Stockholm. Nationalisation of the peasant lands would arouse a
Vend 6e, the Mensheviks flatly declared at Stockholm.

Sincethen, peasant deputies from all over Russia have spoken in three
Dumas. Not a single group of peasant deputies has been won over to
“municipalisation”, which was invented specially in order “not to
touch” the peasant lands.Allthe peasant Trudoviks in all three
Dumas declared for nationalisation of all the land, expressing this demand
some times by directly repeating the Trudoviks’ programme, sometimes by an
original restating of the “single tax”,sometimes by numerous declarations that “the land should go to those who
till it”, “we are prepared to give up our allotments”, etc.

Reallife has made a joke of “municipalisation” and the outcry about
a “Vendée”.

Whatis the economic basis for the supporting of nationalisation by all
politically-conscious peasants? To answer this question, let us recall a
statistical comparison made in the Duma by Comrade

Belousov[8];

"Some76 million dessiatines belong to 30,000 landlords (in
European Russia), while 73 million dessiatines belong to 10 million peasant
households with an allotment of I to 15 dessiatines. . .. There is only one
conclusion possible—that four-fifths of the total number of households
could double the size of their holding” (209). Even if one or other of
these figures is challenged (we think that they cannot be challenged), no
alteration in them can affect the crux of the matter, which is the
following. In striving to double their holdings, the peasants cannot but
strive for the complete fusion and mixing-up of allotment and non-allotment
lands. The preservation of allotment lands as private property, the
property as at present of the peasant house holds and communes, while the
expropriated non-allotment lands are declared social ("municipal”)
property is an economic absurdity. It is the most stupid agrarian
bimetallism, suited only for taking up space in programmes invented by
intellectuals. The economy requires the fusion and mixing up of all
lands. The economy is already uniting bits of allotment land with bits of
landlords’ land (by leasehold); and the elimination of feudalism is
impossible without eliminating those distinctions in landowning, those
bounds and barriers, which “municipalisation” artificially
perpetuates. The economy requires a new landowning, a free landowning
adapted to capitalism and not to the old “allotments”, distributed and
demarcated by bailiffs and official agents. This requirement of economic
development is what the peasants express (without realising the capitalist
nature of this development) when they declare for nationalisation. The old
distinction of allotment and non-allotment landowning contradicts the
requirements of capitalism, and it will inevitably be broken down, despite
all the efforts of theMenshevik municipalisers to prop it. up. And the breaking- down of this
barrier, the amalgamation, the mixing up, the fusion of all categories of
lands for the new economy of the farmer, requires the abolition not only of
landlords’ property, but of all private property in land (the peasants
think mistakenly that any citizen will till the soil; it will be tilled by
every master, i. e., by the one who has the means to do it!).

Stolypinwants to wipe out all previous barriers of all previous forms
of landowning. This desire is economically correct. Capitalism will
inevitably put it into effect. The question is only whether this will he
done at the expense of millions of peasant households (robbery under the
law of November 9) or at the expense of the 30,000 biggest landlords. The
latter method is impossible without nationalisation of the land in a
bourgeois-democratic revolution. That is why in all the three Dumas all
politically-conscious peasants supported nationalisation.

Itremains for us to examine the speeches of the Social- Democrats in
the Third Duma. Only two speakers of our group managed to speak (Gegechkori
and Belousov) before a time limit was introduced. The others began refusing
to speak, protesting against the “act of force” expressed in this
restriction. Both the comrades mentioned did their duty properly. They
pointed out the “aristocratic-bureaucratic spirit” of the government’s
policy; they said that the “statute of 1861 was feudalistic through and
through”; that “hatred of the government” had sunk deep into the soul of
the peasantry, which was demanding “land and freedom”, and which had
displayed in 1.905 its “solidarity” and its capacity for “revolutionary
action”. Our Social-Democratic struggle for “confiscation of the
latifundia and their transfer to the people” was correctly interpreted by
the speakers of our Party, not in the spirit of petty-bourgeois utopias
about “equalisation”, “socialisation” and so forth, but as a measure to
free the country from the yoke of serf-like bondage. The way Gegechkori and
Belousov put the question was the way of a revolutionary Social
Democrat. “Might creates Right,” concluded Comrade Belousov, “and in
order to win Right we must gather our forces and organise them.” Both
speeches by the Social-Democratic spokesmen in the Third Dumashould be kept for handy reference by every member of the Party who carries
on the work of propaganda and agitation. The formula for handing over the
land proposed by the Social-Democratic group missed out only the demand
that the land should be transferred without compensation. This would have
been an important breach of our programme if it had been done
deliberately. But Comrade Gegechkori, who read the formula, mentioned twice
in his speech the necessity of “alienation without compensation”;
therefore the omission can hardly be regarded as deliberate.

[1]Seepresent edition, Vol. 13, pp. 458-59.—Ed.

[2]Ugryum-Burcheyev–a type of dull narrow-minded dignitary
described by Saltykov-Shchedrin in his storyHistory of a Town.

[3]Councilof the United Nobility—a counter-revolutionary
organisation of feudalist landlords. It was established in May 1906 at the
First Congress of Delegates of Gubernia Assemblies of the Nobility, and
existed up to October 1917. The chief aim of this organisation was to
defend the autocratic regime, the big landed estates and the privileges of
the nobility. The Council was headed by Count A. A. Bobrinsky, Prince
N. F. Kasatkin-Rostovsky Count D. A. Olsufyev, V. M. Purishkevich and
others. Lenin called it a “council of united feudalists”. The Council of
the United Nobility was really a semi-governmental body that dictated to
the government legislative measures for protecting the interests of the
feudalists. A great many of the Council’s members belonged to the
Council of State and the leading centres of the Black Hundreds.

[4]Ruralsuperintendent(zemsky nachalnik)—an
administrative office instituted by the tsarist government in 1889 to
strengthen the authority of the landlords over the peasants. The rural
superintendents were appointed from among the local landed nobility and
were granted very great powers—not merely administrative, but also
judicial—with regard to the peasants. p. 310

[5]HenryGeorge—an American bourgeois economist and publicist,
whose views were criticised by K. Marx in his letter of June 20, 1881 to
F. Sorge, and by F. Engels in his preface to the American edition of his
bookThe Condition of the Working Class in England(see K. Marx
and F. Engels,Selected Correspondence, Moscow, 1955, pp. 414-17).

[6]Thisrefers to Plekhanov’s speech at the Fourth (Unity) Congress
of the R.S.D.L.P. where he was co-reporter on the question of revision of
the agrarian programme. Speaking against nationalisation of the land,
Plekhanov said: “To make nationalisation harmless we must find a guarantee
against restoration; and there is not, nor can there be, any such
guarantee. Recall the history of France; recall the history of England; in
each of these countries, the wide sweep of the revolution was followed by
restoration. The same may happen in our country; and our programme must be
such that in the event of its application, the harm that may be caused by
restoration may be reduced to a minimum.” (Minutes of the Fourth [Unity]
Congress of the R.S.D.L.P., Moscow, 1959, Russ. ed., pp. 59-60.)

[7]Razin,Stepan—outstanding leader of the peasant revolt in
Russia in 1667-71 against feudal oppression and serfdom.

[8]Thedraft of Belousov’s speech on the agrarian question was writ
ten by Lenin. The statistical comparisons and figures quoted by Belousov
were taken from Lenin’s books, not yet published at the time, namely,The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian
Revolution, 1905-07(see present edition, Vol. 13, pp. 217-429) andThe Agrarian Question in Russia Towards the Close of the Nineteenth
Century(see pp. 69-147 of this volume).